Alien Pastures

My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Page 9 of 171

Ardour 7.0, Avidemux 2.8.1 and more cool stuff added to my repositories

October 17, 2022 / / 32 Comments

A month full of interesting package updates in my Slackware package repositories. I have not blogged about them, because of a busy work schedule, but here are the highlights.
Note that you can subscribe your feedreader to my RSS feeds (regular and restricted) so that you never miss a package update!

Ardour

With more than two years of development after 6.0 was released in May 2020, a new major update for Ardour was finally made available last week. Packages are available for 32bit and 64bit Slackware 15.0 and -current.
Ardour 7.0 comes with lots of new features, and Unfa goes in-depth in this YouTube video:

Avidemux

Avidemux 2.8.1 was released in September, and I missed the announcement. Fortunately I was alerted to it today by a Slackware user who commented on the blog. These packages are found in my restricted repository because they contain AAC encoder libraries, the code for which is patent-encumbered in the United States.

For the 32bit package I had to forcibly disable SSE support in the soundtouch library, if anyone comes across a patch that fixes the compilation error, let me know. I guess nobody runs test builds of Avidemux on a 32bit OS anymore.

Chromium

I uploaded three consecutive updates for Chromium 106 (regular as well as un-googled) during the last month, did anyone notice?
As usual, any update to Chromium is a must-do, to eradicate any vulnerabilities that allow online hackers to own your computer. Again, subscribing to my repository’s RSS feed will alert you to updates immediately.

Docker

My four Docker related packages (runc, containerd, docker and docker-compose, you don’t need any other package) were also updated to their latest releases last week.
A note: I provide 32bit packages for Docker, even though that is supposed to not work. At least, it is not supported by the developers. I wonder, since I tested the 32bit packages and they actually do work (I can run 32bit containers on a 32bit host) is there anyone who uses these? Or should I skip 32bit builds of future Docker releases altogether? Let me know.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice 7.4.2 was released last week and I uploaded a set of packages right before the weekend, so that you can enjoy the latest and greatest of this office suite on Slackware 15.0 and -current.

Note that I build these packages on Slackware 15.0 but also offer these same packages for installation on slackware-current. Since slackware-current ships newer (incompatible) versions of boost and icu4c, please also install boost-compat and icu4c-compat from my repository – these packages contain older versions of the boost and icu4c libraries and are a live-saver if you are running slackware-current. Note that this “compat” is not the same as “compat32” – which is the designation for the converted 32bit Slackware packages in my multilib package set!

OBS Studio

If you ever have a need for recording a live video using professional-grade software, Open Broadcaster Software released OBS Studio version 28.0.3 recently. If you want to broadcast a live stream of an event you are covering, OBS Studio plugs straight into Youtube, Facebook, Twitch or other streaming platforms. Packages are available for Slackware 15.0 and -current.

More…

Also I had to update Calibre, FFMpeg and Audacity packages for Slackware-current, after the recent incompatible upgrades of Qt5 and FFMpeg in the OS.
If you wonder ‘why ffmpeg, it’s part of Slackware already‘ – my ffmpeg package has several codecs enabled that the stock Slackware version does not offer, particularly the package in my restricted repository.

Have fun! Eric

Chromium 105.0.5195.125 packages available (also ungoogled)

September 22, 2022 / / 6 Comments

I was on vacation for a while, then after my return I mainly focused on getting the new Audacity packages successfully built. In the meantime, Google was not idling and released version 105.0.5195.125 of the Chromium sourcecode.
There’s 11 vulnerability fixes in this release, some of them rated high enough that it is again recommended to upgrade your browser as soon as possible.

I did not forget the un-googled variant of course for which the same recommendation is valid.

The 64bit packages for chromium and chromium-ungoogled (Slackware 14.2 and newer) can already be downloaded from my repository and its main mirrors. You’ll have to wait a bit for the 32bit packages, they are compiling at the moment. Thanks to Google developers who I assume mostly run 64bit Ubuntu, the 32bit compilation of Chromium sources quite frequently meets with issues that need time to resolve.

Eric

Audacity 3.1.3 for Slackware (don’t forget to install all the new dependencies!)

September 21, 2022 / / 21 Comments

Two years ago I added version 2.4.1 of the Audacity multi-track audio recorder to my ‘Digital Audio Workstation’ (DAW) software collection in celebration of its 20th birthday. A lot happened in between then and now.

Not just new releases of Audacity,  but also a couple of forks of the code happened. Which gave us projects like Audacium, as well as  Tenacity, which was superseded again by Saucedacity.
The reason for these forks was the addition of telemetry (i.e. background-sending of application performance data to the developers) to the Audacity source code after the project was acquired by the Muse Group who are responsible for developing MuseScore among others. The same telemetry functionality was already present in MuseScore.
Note that in both Audacity and MuseScore you have to manually and explicitly enable telemetry! It is disabled by default.

In the past years I have provided a couple of 2.x and 3.x releases of Audacity as packages for Slackware, but stopped with updates last year when the developers switched to a ‘software manager’ to build their internal dependencies: conan. On SlackBuilds.org you can find an ancient 0.x release of it based on Python2, but the program has evolved since, uses Python3 now and it requires a truckload of other Python packages to work. Killing a fly with an elephant, and what was wrong with cmake?

But then my friend ppr:kut of the Slackware team asked me if I could rebuild my Audacity package because its wxWidgets-based user interface was using GTK+2 and that does not work well with HiDPI displays. The wxWidgets graphical toolkit can use GTK+3 as well, and could I please switch from GTK+2 to GTK+3 in Audacity.
I decided to look into his request and recompile my audacity-3.0.2 package, found out that it was not trivial to switch the GUI to GTK+3 widgets, kept looking and before you know it, down the rabbit-hole I went.

When I emerged from the rabbit-hole it was with a series of new and updated packages. I had decided not to use conan, which meant I had to provide all of Audacity’s dependencies myself (which conan would have added to the audacity binaries, just like autotools and cmake did for the older releases).
I noticed that I had to build a newer wxGTK3 for Audacity, and that led to a cascade of package updates and additions before eventually everything compiled and ran again. Apart from Audacity, some of the other graphical audio programs that needed a rebuild or upgrade are: Cecilia, Mixxx, and MuseScore.

This is today’s ChangeLog entry for my repository. A lot less new packages now than in the case where I would have caved in and gone with conan:

+--------------------------+
Wed Sep 21 20:17:50 UTC 2022
audacity: updated to 3.1.3 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Note the hugely changed dependency list! Most of the previously internal
  dependencies are now provided as external packages, some are new in my repo.
  Depends on: jack2, ladspa_sdk, libsbsms, lilv, lv2, portaudio, portmidi,
  portsmf, serd, sord, soundtouch, soxr, sratom, suil, twolame, vamp-plugin-sdk
  and wxGTK3.
cecilia5: rebuilt against wxpython 4.2.0 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on python-numpy, python-pyo, wxpython.
daw_base: added boca, freac, libsbsms, portsmf, python-attrdict, smooth,
  soundfont-unison, speex, twolame and uriparser to the DAW template.
erlang-otp: rebuilt against newer wxGTK3 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on wxGTK3.
libsbsms: added v2.3.0 - a library for high quality time and pitch scale
  modification. Package for Slackware 15.0 and -current.
lv2: updated to 1.18.10 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  New dependency: sord.
mixxx: update to 2.3.3 was needed to compile against PortMidi 2.x.
  Depends on chromaprint, faad2, hidapi, libmodplug, libmp4v2, lilv, lv2,
  portmidi, portaudio, protobuf, rubberband, vamp-plugin-sdk.
  Package for Slackware 15.0 and -current.
musescore: rebuilt against PortMidi 2.0.3 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on jack2, portaudio, portmidi.
portaudio: updated to 190700_20210406 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on jack2.
portmidi: updated to 2.0.3, now that the maintainer is active again.
  All programs that depend on portmidi need to be recompiled against this
  new release. The pmdefaults program is not packaged anymore, as per advice
  from the maintainer.
  Package for Slackware 15.0 and -current.
portsmf: added v234 - a library for reading and writing Standard MIDI Files.
  Package for Slackware 15.0 and -current.
python-attrdict: added v2.0.1 - a dict with attribute-style access.
  Package for Slackware 15.0 and -current.
python-pygame: updated to  2.1.2 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on portmidi.
python-pyo: rebuilt against PortMidi 2.0.3 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on portaudio, portmidi, liblo, and jack2.
serd: updated to 0.30.16 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
sord: updated to 0.16.14 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on serd.
sratom: updated to 0.6.14 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on lv2, sord.
suil: updated to 0.10.18 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Depends on lv2.
twolame: added v0.4.0 - an optimized MP2 encoder.
  Package for Slackware 15.0 and -current.
wxGTK3: updated to 3.2.1 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Note that I switched the package from containing static to dynamic libraries.
  This was needed to compile audacity.
wxpython: updated to 4.2.0 (Slackware 15.0 and -current).
  Removed dependencies: wxGTK3, python-pathlib2. New dep: python-attrdict.

The Audacity interface looks a bit different indeed. Tell me how it works for you! It’s not just a version bump; I switched from all-internal libraries to a mass of external libraries (dependencies) and I have not done extensive checking of all its functionality. I just hope it is not painfully broken.

When you install this package, please take good note (see above) of all the new dependencies that you will also need to install from my repository, for instance using my main URL  http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/ (also available via rsync protocol: rsync://slackware.nl/mirrors/people/alien/slackbuilds/).

A “pro tip” for easy upgrade/installation:
If you use slackpkg together with the slackpkg+ extension, you can download an updated DAW template here: http://www.slackware.com/~alien/tools/templates/daw.template containing a full list of all my DAW packages. Copy this template file into “/etc/slackpkg/templates/” and use the command “slackpkg update; slackpkg install-template daw; slackpkg upgrade-all” to get all those new packages installed effortlessly, and obtain all the upgrades as well.

Have fun! Eric

LibreOffice 7.4.1 for Slackware 15.0 and -current

September 15, 2022 / / 32 Comments

LibreOffice Community Edition 7.4.1 was released today and I already have the packages in my repository for Slackware 15.0 and -current. The Document Foundation blog post has all the details, let me do a verbatim copy of the most striking features in the 7.4 releases:

GENERAL

  • Support for WebP images and EMZ/WMZ files
  • Help pages for the ScriptForge scripting library
  • Search field for the Extension Manager
  • Performance and compatibility improvements

WRITER

  • Better change tracking in the footnote area
  • Edited lists show original numbers in change tracking
  • New typographic settings for hyphenation

CALC

  • Support for 16,384 columns in spreadsheets
  • Extra functions in drop-down AutoSum widget
  • New menu item to search for sheet names

IMPRESS

  • New support for document themes

Note that I compile these packages on Slackware 15.0. If you install them on Slackware -current you will also need to download ‘icu4c-compat‘ and boost-compat from my repository and install them. They are two compatibility packages containing older versions of the icu4c and boost libraries, in particular the versions that are part of Slackware 15.0 but no longer part of -current.

Get libreoffice packages from my own Europe-based server: https://slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ or my US-based server: https://us.slackware.nl/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ ;or any mirror if you wait a day, for instance https://slackware.uk/people/alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/ .
These servers all offer rsync access if you prefer that to http.

Enjoy – Eric

Chromium 105 update addresses zero-day exploit

September 5, 2022 / / 11 Comments

Only a few days after Google released Chrome 105 (by means of the 105.0.5195.52 sourcecode) they have pushed an update to 105.0.5195.102.
This update fixes a single bug, but it is a critical one (CVE-2022-3075) for which a zero-day exploit is actively abused by malicious third parties. It’s highly recommended to upgrade your Chromium (regular as well as un-googled) browser to the latest version.

I have already uploaded packages for chromium (64bit and 32bit) and chromium-ungoogled (64bit) version 105.0.5195.102. They’ll work on Slackware 14.2 and newer. The 32bit chromium-ungoogled package will follow in a few hours, no thanks to compiler segfault during the nightly build of this package.

Eric

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